This week: how ASML built a monopoly no rival can replicate, why your AI architecture matters more than your model, and what Mira Murati’s testimony reveals about Sam Altman’s brief ouster from OpenAI.

1. The world’s most complex machine – Works in Progress Magazine

Neil Hacker
Published: 04/23/2026

ASML became the sole provider of EUV lithography machines for advanced chips by embracing risk and partnering with US chipmakers and research labs
ASML makes the only machines that can print transistors finely enough for modern chips. Each costs over $120 million and takes three cargo planes to ship. They got there by distributing risk across customers and outsourcing components, while Nikon and Canon built everything in-house and eventually couldn’t keep up. The precision required is hard to overstate: the mirrors inside an EUV machine are so flat that if you scaled one to the size of Germany, its imperfections would measure in millimeters.

The advantage isn’t the blueprints. Competitors have tried recruiting ASML engineers, and at least one has handed over proprietary information. None of it has closed the gap. What ASML has is forty years of accumulated judgment from engineers who’ve spent their entire careers on one problem. You can’t copy that.

Filed Under: #semiconductorIndustry #lithography #asml

2. Thin Harness, Fat Skills

@garrytan
Published: 04/11/2026

Garry Tan – AI productivity depends on ‘thin harness, fat skills’ architecture that separates deterministic tooling from markdown-based process encoding
The gap between 10x AI users and 100x users isn’t the model, it’s the architecture. Garry Tan’s framework: keep the harness thin, a small program that runs the model and manages context, and push all the intelligence into skill files, markdown documents that define reusable processes and how to handle judgment calls.

Skill files work like method calls. Same process, different inputs, completely different results. When a better model ships, every skill you’ve written gets better for free. The deterministic wiring underneath doesn’t change. That’s where the compounding comes from.

Filed Under: #generativeAi #aiAgents #softwareArchitecture #productivity #techOptimist

3. Mira Murati’s deposition pulled back the curtain on Sam Altman’s ouster

Hayden Field
Published: 05/07/2026

Mira Murati’s deposition in Musk v. Altman reveals she funneled allegations of Sam Altman’s mismanagement to the board before his 2023 ouster
The Musk v. Altman trial gave the public its first real look at what happened when OpenAI fired Sam Altman in November 2023. Mira Murati, who publicly supported his return and was the first to sign the employee letter threatening a mass exodus, had been quietly passing documentation of his mismanagement to Ilya Sutskever. Sutskever turned that into a 52-page memo to the board. Her concerns helped push the board to fire him.

The reversal is the story. Within days of the firing, she was texting with Altman and Satya Nadella about getting him reinstated, all while serving as interim CEO. The deposition has 78 messages from that 14-hour window. It’s a lot.

Filed Under: #theVerge #samAltman #muskVsAltman #leadershipRemoval #openAI #miraMurati